Accountability–an unknown word in DC

Tell me, if a senior executive of any corporation had rolled out a product that was as bad as the ObamaCare website and had caused as much embarrassment and grief for the corporation as this roll out has produced for this administration, would they likely still be employed by the corporation?

Oh, I’m sure you can think of some “lifeboat” instance where it might happen, but for the most part, they’d have been sent packing immediately after the depth of their non-performance was ascertained.

And on Wednesday morning, the embattled secretary of health and human services will submit to a quintessential station of the Washington deathwatch — testifying before a congressional committee — to discuss her agency’s failings in the botched rollout of the federal health-insurance Web site.

Granted, this is only part of the on-going debacle that is the Affordable Care Act, aka “ObamaCare”. And while it will, in years to come, be cited as the perfect example of ineptitude coupled with incompetence, it isn’t the big problem right now. The big problem, as pointed out yesterday, is the country was purposely lied too in order to garner enough support to push this monstrosity through Congress and make it law.

And that lie looks like the biggest lie about domestic policy ever uttered by a U.S. president.

Ever. For those of you who want to cite Clinton, Nixon or some other president, Goldberg points out:

The most famous presidential lies have to do with misconduct (Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook” or Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations”) or war. Woodrow Wilson campaigned on the slogan “He kept us out of war” and then plunged us into a calamitous war. Franklin D. Roosevelt made a similar vow: “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”

Roosevelt knew he was making false promises. He explained to an aide: “If someone attacks us, it isn’t a foreign war, is it?” When his own son questioned his honesty, FDR replied: “If I don’t say I hate war, then people are going to think I don’t hate war. . . . If I don’t say I won’t send our sons to fight on foreign battlefields, then people will think I want to send them. . . . So you play the game the way it has been played over the years, and you play to win.”

Is that the case with Obama? Lying in order to pass some cherished legislation which won’t at all do what you promise it will do is “the game” and in politics, justifies “playing to win”?

Or is it, much more simply, damn the truth, the ends justify the means?

Yeah, that’s how I see it too.

As for accountability for the Obama lie, don’t hold your breath. Sebelius may end up biting the bullet. But the buck won’t even slow down at Obama’s desk.

But it’s hilarious-
The same people who have no problem with Sebilius keeping her job
The same people who collectively creamed their pants when Hillary said “at this point what difference does it make”
The same people who have zero issue with a Pres. who seemingly has to learn everything that’s going on in his realm through the papers
The same people who have not a single problem that nobody has been fired for the IRS scandal….
…..are the same people who:
Trashed Bush for not being psychic and reading the tea leaves of a vague daily briefing to isolate the 9/11 attacks
Trashed Bush for choosing not to put on his Superman cape and rush out to stop an in-progress terror attack singlehanded
Blamed Bush for every single calamity regardless of how involved he really was in the outcome.
Then, those people were for accountability. Now? Not so much?

We interrupt our regular broadcast of Survivor Bat-Crap Island for this special message from the White House.

This evening, President Bush was reported to be very angry when he learned from the 6:00 news about the terrorist attacks that occurred on Tuesday Sept 11th, earlier this week. He has asked the country to stand fast and he’ll be giving a speech here at the Rose Garden at 6:45 in response to what he has learned today was a devastating attack on our nation.

They keep their jobs for only one reason:
Obama must fear what they would say about him if they were fired.
Right?
Or maybe they offer him lightning rod protection…remove them, and the blame falls on him?
Or is he really just not doing his job, and therefore there is no reason to fire anyone?

It wasn’t a lie. Your argument has no substance. Because you don’t understand the power and glory of post-modern argument, in which there is no objective truth, therefore there is also no objective falsehood.
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See how logical that is? Now stop it with the ODS-inspired criticism of Obama. How can you say such nasty things about someone who thinks like me, and has a christlike visage to boot?
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I am subjectively certain that Obamacare is going to be wonderful, and that excuses any minor glitches with people supposedly losing their “coverage” if you want to call it that. Which you shouldn’t. Those policies didn’t include maternity coverage for 60 year old women, or free contraception for Catholics who think they’ll go to hell for using it, or transgender procedures for women stuck in men’s bodies.
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So those people are better off without that so-called coverage. Yes, even if their insurance payments are now 40 percetn of their disposable income, and they have to buy it or do without healthcare completely and pay a fine on top, they’re better off. I decree it. So does Obama.
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Now, could we change the subject? Could we talk about how the Republicans blew it on the shutdown thing? Because it’s been Obamacare for weeks now, with nothing good for me to crow about.
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And don’t start about how the Republicans did the shutdown over Obamacare trying to delay it, and now Democrats are calling for delay. Just don’t start. The Republicans were wrong, and the Democrats were right on this, even though they’re both advocating the same thing. Because the Republicans wanted it for the wrong reasons and the Democrats want it for the right reasons. By the holy principles of postmodern quantum spirituality, I declare it to be so. And if you disagree with my subjective certainty, your argument has no substance. I declare that to be so also. And if you disagree with that, well, shut up.

He never has that problem, the cognitive dissonance relay engages whenever the talking points start to overload his (minimal) rationality circuits.
The excess voltage dumps into a capacitor that supplies power to his Obama Flag waving arm.
That’s why the more it doesn’t make sense, the harder he waves the Obama flag.

And I certainly expected more from the Affordable Care Act, since it is the most significant piece of social welfare legislation since the 1960s, and an absolutely crucial piece of our social safety net going forward. It is early days for the ACA and we should reserve judgment about whether this legislation was just too big and complicated a mess to implement. But, surely, SOMEONE–maybe many people–should be fired for these opening pratfalls. And we should also be able to get some of our money back from the private contractors who failed to implement the exchanges.

Khan: Kirk? You’re still alive, my old friend?Kirk: Still, “old friend!” You’ve managed to kill everyone else, but like a poor marksman, you keep missing the target!
Notice that Joe Klein casts blame for the debacle, not on Obama’s leadership, but his failure to fire somebody.

So that’s the Affordable Care Act: Better protections for Americans with insurance; a new marketplace for Americans without insurance; new tax credits to help folks afford it; more choice, more competition; real health care security not just for the uninsured or underinsured, but for all of us — because we pay more in premiums and taxes when Americans without good insurance visit the emergency room. (Applause.) We get taxed.

in an economy where you and I have to pay for others’ use of some of the benefits of modern society (free riders), I am actually pretty cool with that. I might prefer we do it a bit more formally, as would be the case with open charity.

I REALLY do not want the IRS…with a tax code NOBODY can comply with in reality…making it a matter of REAL taxation via coersion.

Yeah I noticed that too. It’s like listening to Jon Stewart bitch about crappy Obamacare, not because Obamacare is a disaster, but because it’s screwed up, AND it didn’t take over ALL of the health care insurance industry.

In the 2008 election, President Obama’s advisers talked of their boss’s belief that it was time for an “iPod government.” Obama, a technology addict who tools around on his iPad before going to sleep and who fought the U.S. Secret Service bureaucracy for the right to carry a smartphone, would be the first president truly at home in the Digital Age. That put him, he thought, in a unique position to pull the federal government into the Digital Age, too. His administration wouldn’t just be competent. It would be modern. And it would restore America’s faith that the public sector could do big things well.

Now that is the one thing ol’ Sparky Obama did for me…..he convinced me I really COULD be President after all (on account of the low bar he set).
Biden demonstrates I can be a VP, McCain shows me I can be a Senator, and Pelosi shows me I can be a Congressman.

The first round of Obamacare enrollment numbers won’t be released until mid-November, but the White House is already preparing for unspectacular numbers.“If you’re asking me will enrollment be low? The answer is yes because that was always going to be the case,” he told reporters during Thursday afternoon’s briefing. How low? “Better than 123,” which is what Massachusetts saw in its first month of enrollment.
Carney also echoed Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s statement that the Healthcare.gov website never crashed when he said the website “has been functional — it’s just been poorly functional.”
—TheCorner

This is a dirty joke.
Elliot is right. This is Baghdad Bob-level propagandizing.

My feeling, as usual, is we will soon have them all signed up. Our initial assessment is that the web site will be working no later than Christmas.
On this occasion I am not going to mention the numbers of un-insured we have signed up and the number of doctors who have embraced this new plan, the operation continues.
We’re giving a real lesson today. Heavy doesn’t describe the volume of people who have signed up for the insurance. Just look carefully, I only want you to look carefully. Do not repeat the lies of liars. Do not become like them. They are sick in their minds. They say we have only signed up a few. I say to you this talk is not true. This is part of their sick mind.

Obamacare does nothing to link doctors’ fees to their performance and reduce health-care costs, the head of the Mayo Clinic told CNBC on Friday.
“The Affordable Care Act is basically insurance reform—eligibility and access—and basically, they are going to pay for that by reducing the reimbursement. It doesn’t modernize how we drive to higher quality care,” Dr. John Noseworthy said in a “Squawk Box” interview.
He said that updating reimbursement methods to reflect better outcomes will lower health-care costs. “Right now, we’re in a system where we’re reimbursing volume of care not quality and outcomes of care—safety, efficiency and so on. And that’s where most of the costs are.”
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Yes. It WILL actually drive QUALITY down. Costs will be semi-controlled by an attempt to centrally manage reimbursements for people stupid or desperate to sign up for this ObamaDoggle.